Immerse: Messiah - Flipbook - Page 428
416
IMMERSE
•
MESSIAH
9:3-24
“It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This
happened so the power of God could be seen in him. We must quickly
carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work. But while I am here in the world, I am the
light of the world.”
Then he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the
mud over the blind man’s eyes. He told him, “Go wash yourself in the pool
of Siloam” (Siloam means “sent”). So the man went and washed and came
back seeing!
His neighbors and others who knew him as a blind beggar asked each
other, “Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?” Some said he was, and
others said, “No, he just looks like him!”
But the beggar kept saying, “Yes, I am the same one!”
They asked, “Who healed you? What happened?”
He told them, “The man they call Jesus made mud and spread it over my
eyes and told me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash yourself.’ So I went
and washed, and now I can see!”
“Where is he now?” they asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
Then they took the man who had been blind to the Pharisees, because
it was on the Sabbath that Jesus had made the mud and healed him. The
Pharisees asked the man all about it. So he told them, “He put the mud
over my eyes, and when I washed it away, I could see!”
Some of the Pharisees said, “This man Jesus is not from God, for he is
working on the Sabbath.” Others said, “But how could an ordinary sinner
do such miraculous signs?” So there was a deep division of opinion among
them.
Then the Pharisees again questioned the man who had been blind and
demanded, “What’s your opinion about this man who healed you?”
The man replied, “I think he must be a prophet.”
The Jewish leaders still refused to believe the man had been blind and
could now see, so they called in his parents. They asked them, “Is this your
son? Was he born blind? If so, how can he now see?”
His parents replied, “We know this is our son and that he was born blind,
but we don’t know how he can see or who healed him. Ask him. He is old
enough to speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid
of the Jewish leaders, who had announced that anyone saying Jesus was
the Messiah would be expelled from the synagogue. That’s why they said,
“He is old enough. Ask him.”
So for the second time they called in the man who had been blind and
told him, “God should get the glory for this, because we know this man
Jesus is a sinner.”
